I plan to do some freelance work (web apps / sites) with a couple of friends while I am in school for CS. Our clients would be mainly individuals looking for personal websites, and small businesses.

We wish to focus on one specific language/stack, and we have narrowed our choice down to ASP.NET with C# vs. PHP + (some MVC framework). But our question is, what would be best for freelance work?

* Money is an issue, we are all poor college students! *

Here are the pros and cons of each I have found through some research (please feel free to contest these)

ASP.NET:

PROS -
- scalable, maintainable, and clean code
- scalable, maintainable, and clean code (I like this point)
- less developers with knowledge in asp.net compared to php, so it would set us apart from the mainstream php dev

CONS -
- limited options for webhosting (and more costly for our clients...)
- We would only be able to use the "Express" editions of Visual Studio and the SQL server.

PHP + MVC framework:

PROS:
- cheap, ubiquitous web hosting options
- open source!
- upfront cost: $0!
- I'm sure this is a myth, but "allows a better understanding of 'how the web works'" (supposedly because the abstraction layer is less thick compared to asp.net)

CONS:
- ugly code, poor scalability
- tons of freelance php devs already exist who charge dirt cheap (especially those not based in the U.S.)
- Any freelancers out there with any advice, or anyone at all who has some inside insight I - -would greatly appreciate any responses/advice!